Insects have many ways of evading those who would eat them. Butterflies have grown threatening eye-like spots on their wings, and leaf insects use camouflage to blend into nearby foliage. The arms race has yielded some strange creatures: caterpillars like snake heads, moths that resemble bird droppings. This exhibit draws on a wealth of dead bugs from the museum’s 200-year-old collection, as well as live beetles, millipedes and tarantulas. Cockroaches will compete for speed and agility in a “Roach Race 500,” and visitors can bring unidentified insects to an ask-an-entomologist booth. Many of the exhibits are geared toward children, but “sometimes the kids get the parents interested,” said the entomology curator, Jon Gelhaus. For the adventurous, Zack Lemann, a Cajun chef known for his “chocolate chirp” cookies, will also be serving fried dragonflies.

In this accessible contribution to the nature-nurture debate, the British epidemiologist Tim Spector, who runs the world’s largest twin study, argues that environmental factors can alter the way our genes are expressed. Going gene by gene — from genetic variants that have been linked to fat, cancer, happiness, homosexuality and even religious belief — Dr. Spector treats the view that genes are destiny with skepticism. He gives a gentle primer to the field of epigenetics, which studies how our genes respond to chemical changes around them —changes that can “plant a lifelong memory within your cells.” Provocatively, he suggests that some epigenetic alterations may be passed on to future generations through sperm and eggs, allowing for “soft inheritance” of acquired traits, an idea mocked by generations of Darwinians (but not by Darwin himself). Although he indulges in some optimistic speculation about the promise of enhancing fetuses with “epigenetic smart drugs,” Dr. Spector stresses that we are still mostly in the dark about how our genes work.

Photo

The artist Karolina Sobecka has retrofitted a small weather balloon to spray hot water and chemicals to seed small clouds.Credit
Karolina Sobecka

GAMES

Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects. Museum of Mathematics. 11 East 26th Street, New York. Aug. 4-6.

Recreational mathematics may sound like a contradiction in terms, but this three-day conference promises some serious number play. The keynote lectures are by a pair of prodigies: Erik Demaine, who became an M.I.T. professor when he was 20, will ask what computers can prove about games like Tetris; Noam Elkies, the youngest person to earn tenure at Harvard, will demonstrate his proof of a numeric conjecture. (Unfortunately, registration is now closed; the talks are to be published in a book.) Among dozens of smaller talks on the logic of puzzles and games, some are whimsical (a problem about Cookie Monster stealing cookies from jars), others potentially useful (a formula to measure the difficulty of crosswords) and yet others dead serious (an algorithm to weigh the odds of surviving a duel with multiple shooters, by a professor from Kentucky). Hands-on demonstrations will let visitors combine mirrors to understand how a kaleidoscope works, and get into graph theory using LEGOs. Evening entertainment will include mimes, magicians and a juggler, and a sequel to a film based on the satirical Victorian novella “Flatland.”

As the prospects of curbing emissions to prevent global warming grow dimmer, the emerging field of climate engineering is starting to gain more attention. There are proposals to suck carbon into the ocean with giant blooms of plankton, and to shield the planet by spraying sunlight-reflecting particles into the air. The artist Karolina Sobecka takes a do-it-yourself approach to manipulating the climate with her show at the ZERO1 Garage, a Silicon Valley art-and-technology incubator. She has retrofitted a small weather balloon to spray hot saltwater, making small bright clouds that could, at least in theory, reflect enough of the sun’s rays to cool the air. After this Cloud Machine is launched, in a whimsical twist, the public will be invited to take photos of natural clouds from below, and compare them with pictures taken from above by satellite.

A version of this list appears in print on July 30, 2013, on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Science Events: Math Games and Cloud Machines. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe